Pasadena beer culture on display at Stone open house

PASADENA - Beer snobs in the San Gabriel Valley rejoiced this week as the iconic Stone Brewing Co. opened a store in Pasadena.

The hopped up Escondido brewery known for it's double India Pale Ales, espresso bean infused beers and gargoyle logo took up residence on South Raymond Avenue next to the Gold Line's Del Mar Station stop. For Stone, Pasadena and the storefront location just made sense for the first company store outside of San Diego County.

"It seemed natural for us to come to Pasadena," said Greg Koch, co-owner of Stone Brewing.

Koch lived in Los Angeles for 12 years and trips to Pasadena were common. But the location also worked with Koch's other obsession - mass transit.

Things have been clicking for Stone Brewing for more than a decade. The company has grown into a leader in the craft beer. The company store seemed like the next best step. During the Thursday night's open house, scores of beer enthusiasts packed into the company store and adjacent patio to dine on food from the brewery's bistro and sip on limited edition beers.

"Beer now has become incredibly popular, and people are very interested in exploring beers and having a company store in this area is a good fit," said Charles Haig, a Pasadena beer enthusiast who attended the Stone open house.

Koch hopes the store maintains the creativity embodied by Stone. Besides the usual schwag (T-shirt, apparel and stemware), beer enthusiasts can buy bottles of beer, and fill up growlers of limited release ales.

"The style and the character at the store we encourage, and are trying to replicate, is the creativity we maintain at our brewery," Koch said. "Everything that Stone stands for is a form of rejection that there needs to be a normal. We gravitate toward things that are special, unique."

Their beers embody that uniqueness. While vertical tastings are something people associate with wine, annual releases of Stone's Vertical Epic date back to 2002. The beers are intended to store for years and drink in succession.

The Stone Company Store is the newest arrival to an already rich local beer scene. Haven, Congregation Ale House, T-Boyles, Kings Row, Barney's Beanery and Altadena Ale House all specialize in serving up rare and off-brand beers to those who know the difference between and imperial stout and a porter.

And beer has graduated, according to Haig. No longer is beer simply something paired with televised football. People think of beer as a part of culinary culture.

"You now combine good food with good beer like they do at Haven," Haig said.

But the local beer culture owes a lot to Lucky Baldwin's, the English pub on Raymond Avenue that opened in 1996 well before the beer craze went viral.

"When we started the business, no one was drinking beer. The in thing was wine," Lucky Baldwin's owner Peggy Simonian said. "There was a lot of craft beers available at that time, and no one was recognizing it. Places like ours were ahead of the curve."

Stone's arrival means more competition for what has become a crowded space in the beer market, Simonian said.

But she doesn't worry that Stone will steal her or any bar's business.

"It's a different kind of experience than what you have at a bar," she said.

More than anything, Simonian worries that the level of creativity in the beer world, Stone included, will set unrealistic expectations from a new generation of beer drinkers.

"My biggest worry is that people will want something new all the time," Simonian said. "People want sparkle all the time, and I worry that if we don't deliver something brand new all the time, they will get bored."